Further Reading

Last August, I spent five days eating nothing but Soylent, the provocatively named liquid food product created by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rob Rhinehart. Five days wasn’t anywhere near enough to gain more than the briefest glimpses into how the stuff might affect my body—I wound up losing a couple of statistically insignificant pounds, and once I’d moderated my intake some and wasn’t over-stuffing myself, I felt fine. The biggest side effect from eating Soylent for five days was a truly epic amount of gas for a couple of days; my wife is a saintly creature who assures me she didn’t notice, but I recall crop-dusting from room to room, praying that the foul vapors I was venting didn’t kill our houseplants or set our curtains on fire.

The gas calmed down after a couple of days, though, and the experiment was a success. I didn’t die, and farts aside, I felt pretty good. In the months since then, Rhinehart and his coworkers at Rosa Labs have tweaked the Soylent ingredient mix, fine-tuning the substance and figuring out their supply chain in order to meet the truly massive demand generated by the product’s crowdfunding campaign. After months and months of delays, much of which is directly attributable to the rice protein supplier chosen to deliver the tiniest-possible particulate size, Soylent began shipping on April 25.

Our order arrived yesterday afternoon, when USPS dropped off a 40lb. box (about 18kg) on my doorstep. In it were 28 bags of Soylent and 28 individual oil capsules. And we dove right in.

Lee Hutchinson

Here's what four weeks of Soylent looks like. That's 28 days of meals.

Lee Hutchinson

Here's what four weeks of Soylent looks like. That's 28 days of meals.

Lee Hutchinson

A single week of Soylent contains seven meal pouches and seven oil containers. Total weight is just about 10 lbs (4.5 kg).

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Peering into an opened Soylent box.

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The pack-in note included in the initial shipments of Soylent sent to crowdfunding backers.

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The entire order laid out, along with the large 2 liter pitcher and mixing spoon sent out to crowdfunding backers.

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One packet of Soylent.

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The separate oil bottles accompany the Soylent pouches and contain the fats necessary to help make Soylent nutritionally complete.

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Close up on the measuring scoop from the crowdfunding backer kit.

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One packet of Soylent dumped into the 2 liter container. This leaves room for about 1.5 liters of water.

Lee Hutchinson

Unlike the 0.8 beta version of Soylent we tried last year, mass-produced Soylent 1.0 comes out of the pouch homogenized into a fine powder (the 0.8 stuff was very stratified). This means it's easy to scoop and mix smaller portions.

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Soylent, properly mixed. This is the product's normal hue, unadulterated with food coloring (unlike last year, where I went a little crazy with the stuff).

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It's pretty frothy right after being mixed. If you let it settle for a while, it de-froths.

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My long-suffering ML mug gets called to stand in for photos like this because it's clear. The bull looks like he's mired in quicksand.

No soy, no people

"Soylent" as a product name raises a lot of eyebrows. People tend to respond to the name either by immediately exclaiming "It must be made of people!" or by saying "I heard that soy is terrible for you so if you drink this stuff you’ll probably die." Good news for both responses: unlike its colorful namesake in the Harry Harrison novel or the Charlton Heston movie, Soylent contains no people; additionally, it isn’t made out of soy.

The final product has a 50/30/20 ratio of carbohydrates and fats and protein, respectively. The nutrition label we saw back at the end of January is almost identical to the shipping version (the only difference is that the shipped formula has 9g of dietary fiber instead of 8g, moving its RDA percentage from 32 percent to 36 percent). Each bag contains three servings for three full meals, and so with that bag’s oil bottle mixed in, a full bag of Soylent delivers 2,010 kcal and at or a bit over 100 percent of the recommended daily allowances for just about everything.

When we talked to Soylent inventor Rob Rhinehart last year, we made it a point to ask him about the reasoning behind choosing such a polarizing name. "For food, a lot of people tend to react quickly and not give it a lot of analysis. Piquing curiosity is very important here, and giving the product some kind of flashy marketing name would kind of—people would miss it quickly," he explained. "But the name 'Soylent' is really good for encouraging further discussion and thought. Clearly, I'm wanting someone to investigate it a little deeper if I'm calling it 'Soylent.' It doesn't seem very marketable!"

That oddness, along with Rhinehart’s bold claims about Soylent’s nutritional completeness and efficacy, drove a multimillion-dollar crowdfunding campaign that resulted in tens of thousands of orders. Much like other ridiculously successful crowdfunding campaigns, Rhinehart and his small team found themselves staring down a tremendous pile of orders to fill—and the potential to be crushed under the weight of so much success was definitely there. Transitioning Soylent from a small operation sending hand-mixed pouches to a few hundred beta testers into a full-scale manufacturing operation shifting literal tons of product has been a difficult slog, but now that product is shipping in quantity to customers, the sustaining effort should be a lot easier than the run up to the start has been.

Putting it into our mouths and seeing what it does

I mixed up a batch of Soylent immediately after photographing it, and the taste and texture was almost identical to the 0.8 beta formula I ate last year. Bread-y and vaguely sweet, with an almost-but-not-quite aspartame tang to the sweetness. Other sites have described Soylent as "like drinking cake batter," and that’s not a bad description—it’s not as thick, of course, but it does have a spoon-coating consistency somewhere north of whole milk but south of buttermilk.

The chalkiness I’d so disliked during the beta was still there, in spite of the much finer-grained rice protein used in Soylent 1.0, though numerous other places suggested that letting the mixture sit overnight in the fridge would help the protein blend better. I did so, and this morning found the chalkiness to be drastically reduced. Properly-soaked Soylent has a very smooth, almost creamy mouthfeel. However, the silty particulate-type feeling is still there after swallowing—after drinking Soylent, I still feel like I need a small glass of water to get what feels like riverbed mud out of the back of my throat.

The part where we talk about farts

Yes, okay, this is the part of the review that I know at least half of you have scrolled to without bothering to read the rest. The good news—good for me and my wife, anyway—is that after having consumed a half-pitcher of Soylent over the last 20 hours, my gut is in fact not producing World War I trench warfare mustard gas.

That’s not to say everything is completely copacetic below the belt, though. I would say that while Soylent 1.0 hasn’t made me essentially house-bound like the 0.8 Beta version did, it is disrupting my normally clock-like regularity. My gut has produced its share of ominous rumbles, and my usual morning reading time has been augmented with two much faster, much smaller trips to the library that rated probably a 5 or 6 on the Bristol scale. Also, by "library" I mean "toilet."

A bit of heightened gut activity aside, things are proceeding much better than in the beta. I don’t feel as if my belly is hosting a Blue Man Group performance, and I have no doubt that after another day or two things will settle down back to normal. And, if they don’t, I’ll have another poop-related story to write on Monday! Everyone wins!

Success, backlash

But in spite of being an unquestionable success monetarily, Soylent still has a significant number of detractors in lots of different places. Commenters on past Ars pieces have repeatedly asked what meaningful differences exist between Soylent and other liquid nutrition products, both in the consumer space (something like Slim Fast or Ensure) and the medical space (with products like Jevity). The answers that Rhinehart has given to those specific questions (which you can read in our finale piece from last year) don’t often stick.

Lee Hutchinson introduces his buddy Matt to Soylent. Hilarity ensues.

Health professionals tend to be all over the map with their reactions, with some predicting doom and others praising the product. Rosa Labs has been more than willing to subject both Soylent and its employees’ Soylent-filled bodies to medical scrutiny during the product’s iterative development; the company has been working with Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons on how to keep the product, and its employees, healthy. There are no long-term (or really even short-term) studies on what Soylent does to a person. Rhinehart points out that all of the product’s ingredients are well-studied, but detractors counter by saying that the exact means by which the body transforms food into nutrients isn’t wholly understood, and that "eating" is a much more complex and holistic process than just filling up RDA percentages.

Health concerns aside, the idea of drinking a "nutrient slurry" for sustenance in general tends to evoke a strong sense of revulsion from no small number of people. The most extreme of these seem to express intense disgust and offense at the very idea of something like Soylent.

Rhinehart has stated many times, though, that one of his ultimate aims with Soylent is to democratize nutrition and transform it into a basic utility—something like running water or electricity. The cheapest way to get Soylent right now is by ordering a month’s supply on a recurring basis, which costs $255 and works out to about $3 per meal. Rhinehart wants to drive the cost down even further so that it can eventually compete with "rice and beans" (the price of which of course varies across the world, but a target of about $1.50 per day per person wouldn’t be out of line).

It’s a noble goal, but not everyone is wholly on board with it—some, like author Ruth Reichl, have gone so far as to say that Soylent could potentially undermine and erode the food traditions of developing cultures, displacing heritage recipes and methods of food preparation with convenience, and ultimately pushing the world in a direction where poorer peoples and countries subsist on Soylent while the developing world eats whatever they’d like.

That seems a little dystopian for my tastes, but my perspective is also a lot narrower—I paid out-of-pocket for the month’s worth of Soylent currently sitting in my kitchen because it appeared to offer a convenient and ostensibly healthy way to eat without having to go through the hassle of preparing lunch. "Hassle" is a relative term, of course, and when this line of thinking has come up in past articles, commenters are often quick to point out that making a sandwich takes all of 30 seconds, but that misses the larger point that a lot of folks—myself included—intensely dislike all the support activities necessary to make that 30-second sandwich possible. Grocery shopping for a constant stream of fresh ingredients and then attempting to eat them before they go bad is an exercise in repetitive futility for me—I’m the guy who winds up having to buy $50 of stuff to make lunch at home, and $49 of it goes bad before I use it more than once.

However—and it’s a big however—everyone’s schedule and likes and wants are different. It’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. And, because of Soylent, I have the option of glugging my way through a fast liquid lunch when I don’t feel like keeping the larder stocked—and can also enjoy cooking and eating a fabulous dinner with my wife when the mood strikes.

Soylent and everything after

One of the reasons Rhinehart waited so long to ship Soylent—supply chain issues notwithstanding—was to ensure that once the product did start shipping, customers could reorder Soylent when they ran out without having to wait. I asked Rhinehart if this was going to be the case—as I neared my month of Soylent, would I be able to get more without having to wait months?

"We are structuring shipments and inventory in a way that reorders will be serviced immediately," confirmed Rhinehart. Between that and building up additional manufacturing lines, he is confident that people who want to have a continual supply of Soylent will be able to do so. "We've had our roadblocks but the product turned out quite good," he added, "and I am glad we took the time to get it right, though ideally the process would have gone more smoothly, which it certainly will going forward."

More than 30,000 individual bags of Soylent have been shipped from the Rosa Labs warehouses, and Rhinehart and the Soylent team are filling the remainder of the preorders as fast as they can. Further, the first string of re-orders appears to be also going out to folks, putting paid to Rhinehart’s intentions of keeping the supply flowing to repeat customers. The pricing of the product will likely fluctuate as the ingredient mix changes over time, and Rhinehart is already looking at ways to improve things—and perhaps even turn Soylent into something without any agricultural roots at all.

"We have a roadmap of changes and improvements I'd qualify as substantial enough to go through Soylent 1.3 at least," Rhinehart commented yesterday in a discussion on the official Soylent forums. "I think Soylent produced entirely independent of agriculture would qualify as Soylent 2.0, and Food 3.0."

In a world that’s still getting used to Soylent, we’re content to sit back, sip our liquid nutrition, and watch what Rhinehart and his team do next.

TIL writing frankly about one's experiences with a product (including describing its "chalky" texture and some changes in bowel movements) and noting both positive and negative reactions to it = "shamelessly promoting".

Hyperbole much? Apples, bananas and figs are all high in fructose.It's only a problem if you drink vast quantities of government subsidised fructose, and overload your liver. But nobody would realistically do that.

I just want to say thanks Lee for all your coverage of this. I'm very interested in trying Soylent, I need to go see if they are finally supplying orders to other countries (in Canada here), but last I checked it wasn't the case. Perhaps you can get this information out of Rob and let us know?

Hyperbole much? Apples, bananas and figs are all high in fructose.It's only a problem if you drink vast quantities of government subsidised fructose, and overload your liver. But nobody would realistically do that.

I find that the ratio of sugar to fiber is more important than sugar content per se, preferably near a 1:1 ratio (at least for added sugar).

I'm curious to try this stuff, but I've been looking for people talking about ways to change up the flavor a bit. Just drinking "cake batter" every day, three times a day, will get old quickly.

Unfortunately, my google-fu has failed me on this topic, and all I've managed to find are people posting their own homemade Soylents, not people taking Rhinehart's Soylent and making it taste different/better. Does anybody have a pointer to some info on this?

I'm curious to try this stuff, but I've been looking for people talking about ways to change up the flavor a bit. Just drinking "cake batter" every day, three times a day, will get old quickly.

Unfortunately, my google-fu has failed me on this topic, and all I've managed to find are people posting their own homemade Soylents, not people taking Rhinehart's Soylent and making it taste different/better. Does anybody have a pointer to some info on this?

From my time when I was on a homemade shake/smoothie kick, it's hard to go wrong with things like bananas, natural peanut butter, and cocoa powder.

some, like author Ruth Reichl, have gone so far as to say that Soylent could potentially undermine and erode the food traditions of developing cultures, displacing heritage recipes and methods of food preparation with convenience, and ultimately pushing the world in a direction where poorer peoples and countries subsist on Soylent while the developing world eats whatever they’d like.

What an elitist load of crap. Even in America, in 2012 (going by the US Census and USDA) around 14.5% of households were "food insecure" (not enough food to be healthy or active) with nearly 6% having very low food. That's not taking into account that often times the cheapest food is also nutritionally poor. Going to the world at large, over 800 million people are malnourished (~180 million children), with huge social and economic implications particularly amongst children since it disrupts brain growth, increases susceptibility to disease etc resulting in malnourishment itself increasing the likelihood of more poverty.

Soylent itself may or may not do a decent job, it's just one implementation of an idea and others may well do better going forward (as no doubt they will themselves with 2.0/3.0/whatever). But the idea of "let's make something as perfectly nutritionally complete as we can for as absolute dirt cheap as technology allows" is completely sound. It doesn't need to (and doesn't) compete with nice meals or cooking or anything else higher end that exists, it competes with cheap junk. The idea is to set a baseline, a level where even if it's not perfect no one is deprived of basic macro and micronutrients. Airy handwaves to "well we don't understand 100% perfectly" or "but my organic whole food raised by the hand of jesus is better!" are BS given how people actually live and what they subside on right now. Soylent or similar don't need to beat out the local coop, it's good enough to be significantly better then, say, cup ramen and a twinkie. Perfect should not be the enemy of good.

There are a lot of potential uses for a baseline nutrition if they can get it cheap enough, and there's probably significant scope for interesting optimization (extensive use of GMOs might be a great way to build in the right amount of micronutrients, eliminating the expense of a separate vitamin mix for example). However well Soylent 1.0 itself does, I applaud the effort, publicity, and in turn public discussion it has invoked.

I'm really interested in Soylent. I've got an order in myself, and I hope that the idea, if not this specific product, becomes generally accepted. If the easiest food is also the healthiest food is also the cheapest food, that's a really big deal. I don't really imagine myself eating it for 3 meals a day consistently, but considering the little I have for breakfast and the junk I often consume for lunch, if I could save money and "eat" better with Soylent for those two meals, I think I'd be better off.

The idea is to set a baseline, a level where even if it's not perfect no one is deprived of basic macro and micronutrients.

There are many different ways to set a baseline, though - and some involve actual food, not surrogates. It is a little disturbing when rich people's solution to world hunger is "Let them eat Soylent".

It's a little disturbing that you ascribe such sentiments out of the blue, have nothing of substance beyond some vague appeal to emotion, or assert that this is in any way not "actual food". How you square what you wrote with well off people wanting it for themselves is also curious.

I just want to say thanks Lee for all your coverage of this. I'm very interested in trying Soylent, I need to go see if they are finally supplying orders to other countries (in Canada here), but last I checked it wasn't the case. Perhaps you can get this information out of Rob and let us know?

Well I appreciated your satire of the naysayers, Wheels, even if a few others didn't get it.

The human diet is diverse and what may be considered an essential staple in one country isn't present in the diet of another, often with no ill effects to either peoples. We can survive on a wide variety of foods and have done for thousands of years. Discounting something that is new because it's different is also, sadly, well established.

A food that is readily available, nutritionally complete and frees people from the needless drudgery and cost of sourcing, storing and preparing multiple ingredients is a win as far as I'm concerned. And if you're still having a problem with that, why not go back to sitting around a camp fire subsisting on the charred leg of something you killed yourself? And yes, I don't doubt there's an Ars reader or two who enjoys that from time to time. Fair play to them. Meanwhile no one is forcing Soylent down your throat, each to their own.

I will be waiting until at least 10% of the population is using exclusively before I pile on.

I'll admit I don't really understand the fascination with "exclusive use" or "living off of it", at least at this stage of things. It seems most attractive right now as a potential "gap" food. I love to cook, have access to fantastic food stores with a wide variety of ingredients, and a decent kitchen (making me luckier then many). I like food. But even so, there are occasions when I'm incredibly busy and don't want to take the time, or I'm exhausted or haven't paid attention and stuff has gone bad and it's 11 pm etc etc etc., and end up eating badly. Like anything fun, cooking is most enjoyable to do when I want to and have planned for it. Being forced to, when I'm already starving/tired and have insufficient ingredients, significantly subtracts from the experience.

Over time and given further refinement and experimentation, products with this focus seem like a good way to fill in those gaps, better then a lot of other long shelf life, budget, instant stuff. It's not replacing a nice meal, it's replacing a crappy one. Given the focus on cheapness and its shelf life, it might eventually be useful as a backstop food for more serious disasters too.

Media being media and publicity being publicity, no doubt plenty of hyperbole will get tossed around and there will be plenty of coverage on extreme use cases or "experiments" setup to produce dramatic and eye-ball grabbing stories. Also as usual the reality is likely to be far more mundane but still plenty significant. There is nothing wrong with refining, recombining and refocusing long existing ideas/goals into new implementations, in fact that's where much of our most significant advances have come from. If this kicks off a new wave of products that exploit advancing tech to the max it'll prove an interesting part of the nutrition mix.

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Unfortunately, my google-fu has failed me on this topic, and all I've managed to find are people posting their own homemade Soylents, not people taking Rhinehart's Soylent and making it taste different/better. Does anybody have a pointer to some info on this?

I'd imagine there will be a lot more experimentation once, you know, a large number of people actually have it. Probably a lot of the standard tricks will work though, such as adding a bit of lecithin, leaving it over night, using ice cubes, standard additions like coconut or bananas or cocoa or whatever etc.

There is nothing new or futuristic here. Nutrition shakes have been around for a long time. Its right in the inventors own words:

"Piquing curiosity is very important here, and giving the product some kind of flashy marketing name would kind of—people would miss it quickly... But the name 'Soylent' is really good for encouraging further discussion and thought"

In other words, there is nothing different about the product among many like it, so they try to make an interesting story around it to generate buzz and get it in the news a lot.

There's new stuff in their approach, not just their marketing. Consumer "nutrition shakes/meal replacements" are generally full of sugar, and going on those all day would load you way up beyond the RDA for it. Medical nutrition liquids are expensive and often proprietary. The whole concept of this stuff, as has been repeatedly stated in every Ars article ever, is that you get balanced nutrition on the cheap, in a way that's open to scrutiny and which can easily be reproduced.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.